I used to make wine and beer from kits when I was a student, but had never made beer from the basic ingredients — Jo is a brewer and she helped me do a proper job. We brewed a mild in my poorly-equipped kitchen using this recipe from BrewersFriend. BrewersFriend seems really cool. We used ingredients from the friendly people at MoreBeer. Basically just a few different types of milled grain and some hops and yeast.

We built a sparge arm that ultimately was not used. It seems to work so hopefully it comes in useful one day:

Mashing, boiling, playing with Nintendo Switch:

After we boiled and strained the mash we cooled the wort using an immersion chiller. We carefully pried off the bug screen and ran the garden hose through the bathroom window.

Sterilizing bottles in the oven. You just put the bottles on a couple of layers of newspaper and run the oven at a low temperature for 20m or so.

After a couple of weeks in the cupboard, siphon the beer into a bucket with a tap, add some extra sugar for carbonation, and fill up bottles. You’re going to want to listen to “Endtroducing…” while you do this.

Finished product about to go in the shed for conditioning. I didn’t have a scale so we eyeballed the extra sugar, I think it was about right.

Update: it was not about right. Over-carbed and too fizzy. But otherwise very nice!